My name is LeeAnne Padilla and I am a freshman at Austin College.  I’ve always been interested in the study of human behavior and how we think.  Besides being in this class, I have never taken a class in Psychology before.  I think it would be extremely interesting to analyze human behavior and other processes that occur in our seemingly complex brains.

Whenever I hear the word “psychology” I usually imagine highly qualified therapists or doctors studying the nature of the human mind and why people think and do certain things.  I guess to a certain extent that’s what psychology is.  However, what if normal college students, like myself, were the ones studying and researching all about the human mind?

After looking at the different topics listed on our syllabus for this semester, three of them stood out to me: moral development, stereotypes & discrimination and psychotic, traumatic, & personality disorders.  First, moral development seemed very interesting to me.  It’s one thing to discuss how learning and common sense skills were developed, but to discuss how morals and basic human values were learned and accepted in society is a whole different spectrum of analysis.  The next topic that caught my eye was the topic of stereotypes & discrimination.  We live in a world today where people are voicing their opinions and concerns more and more.  Gay rights activists protest on the streets, thousands of women from across the country march in their own cities, expressing their concerns on how the new president will protect their rights in this country.  However, even though these outspoken protests continue every year, so do the constant stereotypes of different races, genders, religions and many more “groups” of people.  I think it would be very interesting to discuss how stereotypes and overall discrimination has gotten better over the years and also how it has grown in certain areas and how it still affects millions of people today.  The third topic that interested me was the topic of psychotic, traumatic, & personality disorders.  As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve always been interested in analyzing how and why people think and do certain things, so discussing and analyzing the many different psychological disorders that exist and how they affect the mind, naturally sparked my interest.

As I looked through the list of topics on the syllabus, there were also three that weren’t as interesting to me as the others I have mentioned.  The first one that fell a little flat for me was the topic of research methods, just because it seems to be focused on how scientists and researchers actually find information and how they create theories about different psychological disorders.  Although, this does sound interesting, compared to the other topics it wasn’t as exciting to me.  Another topic that I wasn’t as intrigued by was the topic of concussions, mostly because it seemed to be focused on physical injuries and how those affect your brain and way of thinking.  Again, this does sound interesting, just not as much as the other topics do.  The third topic that didn’t quite catch my eye was the topic of operant conditioning, primarily because I don’t know much about it and it just didn’t stand out to me that much.

As I go through this course and learn about these different, yet very interesting, topics, I hope to answer one simple question: How can I apply this knowledge to my everyday life and possibly my future career?

Hopefully as I take this course, it will open up my mind to many different ways of thinking and it will give me the knowledge to possibly help a friend who is either interested in psychology or struggling with their own psychological issues.  I could even use this knowledge to better understand my own life and my own way of thinking, as well.